by Damon Knight
Naismith felt totally bewildered. The period of his transit through the Earth had to be approximately forty-two minutes, no matter from what height he began his fall. Could his watch be running too slowly? Was time in the capsule moving at a rate different from that of time outside?
As the fall continued in darkness, Naismith grew aware of both hunger and thirst. He had been penned up here for only about an hour, and that ought to be well within his tolerance; but how long was this going on? How long could he last?
Once more, by an effort of will, he calmed his mind. The shell steadily cooled; otherwise no change was perceptible.
If he assumed a lag in the capsule’s absorption and re-radiation of heat, Naismith drowsily thought, then it could be supposed that he had reached the mid-point of his orbit in just about twice the predicted time. That would imply that there was a difference of time-rate inside the capsule, or else that some other factor had been reduced for unknown reasons….
For a moment he allowed himself to speculate on what he would do to the two aliens, if by some incredible chance he came out of this alive and met them again; but he cut off the thought. He felt himself drifting again into sleep, and abandoned himself to it willingly.
He snapped back to awareness with a start. How long had he been dozing?
He felt the watch. It was 10:17. He had been in free fall for seventy-two minutes.
Tension began to build in him again. Unless his understanding of the situation was simply, grossly wrong, then the zone of heat he had passed must have been the core of the Earth; and his period must be about twice what he had originally calculated. But why?
Time dragged. It was 10:19; then 10:23; then 10:27. Naismith waited tensely. Ten-nineteen. Now, if ever—
One moment he was still in utter blackness. The next, stars bloomed out beneath him, a galaxy of them, blindingly brilliant in their half-globe of night. Above him was a dark orb that occluded the other half of the sky; it was drifting away as he watched.
Naismith blinked up at it in uncomprehending wonder for a moment, until he realized that it was the night side of the Earth—that he had burst out of it feet-foremost.
His breath caught, and tears came to his eyes. He was out, out in the fresh air at last! He made an instinctive attempt to squirm around right-side-to, but gave it up immediately; that did not matter.
What did matter, he realized with sudden alarm, was that he was rising too high! The wrinkled, starlight face of the water was drawing away overhead—five hundred feet, a thousand, with no sign of slowing down.
The time had been top long; his speed was too great.
Coming down, Naismith realized with horror, he would be going much too fast to dare turn off the machine…
He would have to go all the way through, past that inferno of heat—at least once, perhaps twice. He was grimly sure that he could not survive even one more passage.
The globe above him continued to recede. Now it was con-cave, a gigantic silver-lit bowl: now it turned convex. The sky beneath changed from blue-black to purple, to ebony. The stars shone with a crueler sharpness.
Veils of cloud whisked by and receded, dwindling. How was it possible that he should be rising so far? He must be nearly into the stratosphere.
Now his speed was diminishing. He hung fixed in space for an instant, then saw the Earth creeping nearer again.
On the whole broad, overhanging curve of the ocean, there was not one light, not a ship. His ascent had taken perhaps a minute and a half; in the same length of time he must plunge back into the sea.
Naismith stared at the immense globe as it swelled toward him. There must be some explanation! It was out of the question for a falling body to come up ten or fifteen miles higher than the point it had started from… Unless—
Suddenly Naismith remembered the instant of his fall, and the seeming nightmare slowness of it, while he fought to escape the shell of the force-field he was in.
Make this assumption: that the relation of the machine to the normal physical universe was such that its gravitational interactions were reduced… that it fell, say, with half or a quarter the normal velocity.
He ran through the calculations quickly, with growing excitement. Substituting one-quarter g gave him a figure of eighty-five minutes, which was almost exactly right.
There was an apparent violation here either of the conserva-tion of energy or the principle of equivalence, but never mind that now… The consequence was that during his fall, he would tend to swing out away from the Sun, being less attracted to that body than the Earth was. The center of his orbit would be displaced a few miles, just enough to account for this rise….
The globe of the Earth was rushing toward him. Naismith watched it grimly, thinking that the next time he approached the surface it would be somewhere in the Pacific, about forty-two degrees west of Lake Michigan. Then eighty-four minutes back again; this time he would come out somewhere near the 63rd meridians, still in the Indian Ocean.
Now the dark surface was hurtling down at express-train speed. Naismith involuntarily braced himself, even though he knew there would be no sense of contact. He saw a whorl of bluish light just above him, expanding, rushing down. His eyes widened; he had just time to gasp, then something struck him a murderous blow.
The universe wheeled majectically around him; there was pain deep in his head. The stars slowly darkened and went out.
Chapter Twelve
He was aware of having been unconscious, of a pain in his head, and of a wordless anxiety that had driven him up out of sleep.
He opened his eyes.
He was looking up into a gulf of blue sky, dotted with clouds. Hardness pressed against his back; the air he breathed was cool and pure. Something dry and flexible brushed his cheek as he turned his head; vague yellowish rod-shapes moved across his vision. He sucked in a breath, rolled over and sat up.
He was on the ground, with grass shoulder-high all around him. A few feet away, on the trampled grass, lay a small blued-steel machine.
Naismith stared at it in frozen surprise for an instant, before he realized it was not the same one the aliens had used: the shape was similar, but not identical.
He reached for it, and found himself held back, although he could neither see nor feel any obstacle. Incredulous, he put out his full strength, straining until the blood roared in his ears; but he could not force his body an inch closer to the machine.
After a moment he gave it up, and cautiously got to his feet.
He felt no restraint, and was able to stand; but when he tried to take a step toward the machine, the same impalpable barrier held him back.
He straightened again, looking out over the sea of grass. At first he saw only the rolling yellow waves, with an occasional green treetop in the distance, and a line of misty hills along the horizon. Then he became aware of movement.
A few hundred yards away across the plain, a human form was moving slowly through the grass. It was a girl, the upper part of her body either nude or lightly clothed; her legs and hips were hidden by the grass. She was walking with leisurely grace, halting occasionally, with her face turned up to the sun.
He could not make out her features, but something in the lines and the motion of her body made him think she was young.
She had not noticed him. Naismith glanced again at the machine on the ground, then crouched out of sight and once more began a desperate effort to approach it. He found that he could walk in a circle around the machine, but could never come any nearer. He dug his feet in and pushed, with some idea of forcing the machine to move ahead of him, but did not succeed.
He stopped, gasping for breath, and looked over the tops of the grasses again. The girl was much closer. This time she saw him.
Naismith stood up and waited.
The girl walked unhurriedly toward him. Her skin was tanned, her hair coppery, shining in the light. She was dressed, or half dressed, in bits of contoured metal and fabric that clung to her body here and th
ere, in a pattern more esthetic than functional. Her eyes were narrowed as she walked, as if she were aware of nothing but the caress of sun and air on her body.
She waited until she was only a few yards away before she spoke. “Awake already?” she said. The language she used was BoDen.
Naismith did not reply. Seen so near at hand, the girl had a startling, provocative beauty. Her skin was satiny, as if covered by an almost invisible sheer tissue—spiderweb-stuff that ended, without a visible border, at the edges of her lips and eyes. The red-violet of her lips might have been natural or artificial. Her eyes were pale green, fringed with dark lashes, startling against her brown face.
She was watching him with an amused expression. “Well, don’t stand there—back away.”
Naismith did not move. “Who are you—what is this place?”
“Earth, of course. Now back off so that I can get in.”
Naismith glanced down at the machine, then back at the girl. “What if I don’t?”
“I’ll leave you here until you get hungry.”
Naismith shrugged, backed off a few steps into the tall grass.
The girl waited, then darted forward to the machine. She sat down on the ground beside it, folding her legs neatly, and looked up at him with a mocking smile. “All right, you can come back.”
Naismith looked at her, then stared around at the grassy plain, peaceful and silent under the sky.
Absently he let his fingers trail through the dry, bearded grasses.
Far off, the tiny dot of a bird launched itself from one of the isolated treetops; he followed it across the sky until it alighted again.
“This is a beautiful spot,” he said.
Her laughter made him turn. “Like to see what it’s really like?” she said. She tossed something toward him. “Here.”
Naismith’s hand went up automatically to bat the thing away; at the last moment he changed his mind, plucked it out of the air.
It was a shaped blue grip of some smooth, waxy substance.
When his hand closed around it, a disk of dark color glowed into being just above it.
He stared at the thing in perplexity for a moment before he realized that he was looking through the disk, at a three-dimensional scene beyond. He turned the grip this way and that, swung it around, and discovered that the view through the disk corresponded with the landscape around him—
horizon, hills, the plain itself were all there, but all changed.
Grass and trees were gone; instead, there was raw earth and rock—blackened, cratered and barren under a starred purple sky. The sun blazed overhead—not the ordinary ball of light, but a monstrous thing with flames spreading high from either side. Naismith lowered the disk, puzzled.
“What is that—another time line?” he asked.
“I told you,” she said looking up at him serenely. “That is what is really here. Everything you see is only a clever illusion.” She indicated the landscape around them. “Earth is a dead planet now—destroyed by wars. You could not even breathe here, if you were not protected by this machine.”
Naismith frowned, and put out a hand to touch the nearest clump of grass. The dry stems, the bearded tips, were real to his fingers. He pulled up a few, wadded them in his palm, watched them fall.
“I don’t believe you,” he said flatly. “Who would do such a thing?”
“They say Zugs did it,” she answered indifferently. “The proof is that only human beings see any of this—a camera will not photograph it, and the illusion will not pass through that viewer. Give it back.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Naismith tossed the grip to her.
The disk winked out as it left his hand, winked on again as she caught it. She glanced through it, said with a trace of bitterness,
“All dust and stone,” and put it away in her silver belt.
“Then why were you walking out there?” Naismith asked curiously.
She shrugged her bare shoulders. “It’s beautiful,” she said.
“Why shouldn’t I enjoy it, just because it’s an illusion?” She gazed up at him. “Well, get in.”
Naismith stepped closer, watching as she picked up the machine. “Where are you taking me?”
Without replying, she touched the controls of the machine.
A faint jolt came, and they were enclosed in a transparent bubble, through which the landscape shone spectral blue.
Almost at once, without any feeling of motion, the earth dropped away underneath, the sky began to darken.
Naismith leaned forward slightly, found that the same barrier kept him from approaching the girl. She smiled up at him mockingly, and lit a green cigarette with jeweled fingers that trembled slightly. “Sit down, Shefth.”
Naismith obeyed slowly, staring at her. “I remember now,”
he said. “I saw something blue coming up, then—”
She nodded, blowing a jet of greenish smoke. “I didn’t dare take a chance with you,” she said. “I hit you with a force-rod as I pulled you in. Then I thought I might as well wait till you woke up, so I went forward a few thousand years and landed down there.” She moistened her lips. “You’re strong,” she said.
“By all the rules, you should have been unconscious for at least another twenty minutes. Anyhow, I had time to put a mind helmet on you and read all your little secrets.”
Naismith felt his body tensing. “What secrets?”
“I know them all,” she said, wagging her head wisely. “All about California, and the two Uglies you called Lall and Churan.” She laughed. “And what they wanted you to do.”
Naismith stared at her, eyes narrowed. “Do you speak English?” he asked abruptly.
She did not respond.
“Do you know that you are a dirty little slut?” he asked in the same even tone.
Her eyes blazed at him. Her lips pulled away from her teeth, and for an instant Naismith felt a chill of alarm. Then it was gone.
“I won’t kill you now,” she whispered in English. “That would be too easy. When I kill you, it will be slowly and painfully, to teach you not to speak that way to Liss-Yani.”
Naismith caught his breath, then pointed a finger at her.
“Now I know you,” he said. “It was your voice, that night, when I saw the Zug. You said ‘Kill it’ in just the same tone.
You sent that—vision, whatever it was. And those dreams—
Why?”
She blinked at him. “Aren’t you afraid?”
“Why should I be? You said you’re not going to kill me now.”
“And later?”
“Later, maybe I’ll be afraid.”
“I wonder,” she said, licking her moist violet lips. She stubbed the cigarette abruptly into a hole in the floor, and it vanished. “What’s your name?” she asked.
“Gordon Naismith.”
“Not that. Your real name, what is it?”
“I don’t remember,” said Naismith.
She looked at him thoughtfully. “And you don’t remember anything about the City, or the death collars, or Thera-Yani?”
“No.”
She sighed. “I wish I could believe you. Come here and kiss me.” She tilted up her face and sat waiting, hands on the control box.
After a surprised instant, Naismith slid toward her. The invisible barrier halted him, then seemed to soften; it melted away until his face approached hers; but when he tried to extend his arms, they were stopped in mid-air.
“Well, come on,” she said, half-closing her eyes.
Naismith, half annoyed, half intrigued, leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips were soft, hot and moist; they parted under his at once, and her soft tongue probed into his mouth.
After a few moments, she lay back and pushed him away.
“Is that your best effort?” she asked. “Go on, sit down.”
She plucked another green cigarette out of the floor and lit it. “Well, I never heard of a Shefth that could kiss.”
Nettl
ed, he asked, “Then why did you suggest it?”
“I wanted to see what you would do. A real Shefth would not kiss a Yani.” She cocked her head at him. “Actually, it was not too bad.”
Naismith stared at her in surprise for a moment, then laughed. Remembering the world of his dreams, he thought, No, of course a Shefth would not kiss a Yard; and she had all the stigmata—the coppery skin and hair, green eyes, slender, tapering fingers….
“How did you know where to find me?” he asked in BoDen.
“Were you watching, all that time I was with Lall and Churan?”
“Of course. Uglies are very stupid. They thought you would simply drop into the Earth and never come out again. But I knew better. I computed your orbit, and—” She shrugged.
“Then it was easy.”
Her fingers were slowly stroking one of the buttons on the control box she held on the floor. Naismith said, “You know, of course, that it was on your account the Uglies decided they couldn’t trust me?”
“I know.”
“Then why can’t you trust me?” he demanded. “Either I’m on one side or the other.”
“Because there’s something wrong about you,” she said, and blew green smoke at him. “I felt it when I kissed you, and I am never mistaken. I don’t know what it is—you seem to be just what you say, a Shefth who has lost his memory. But there is… something. Oh, well—forget it.” She touched the control box, then leaned back against the wall. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
At once Naismith was again acutely aware of both needs.
Watching nun, the girl reached behind her to the wall, withdrew a cup of foaming white liquid and a brownish, solid cake.
She broke the cake in half, offered him the cup and one piece of the brownish stuff.
Naismith accepted both, but cautiously watched the girl nibble at the cake before he tried it himself. It was chewy and rich-tasting, something like figs. He sipped the liquid, found it agreeably astringent.
The girl laughed suddenly.
“What is it?” Naismith demanded, lowering the cup.
“You were so easy,” she said. “How do you know I did not put ten-day poison in the fruit or wine?”